Contacting Suspicious Persons and Vehicles: Training Resources for Your Team
Free 4-hour church safety training resources on contacting suspicious persons and vehicles. Includes sermon, handouts, scenarios, and slide deck for sustainment training.
I’m providing FREE training resources for you to use for your church. Please read this entire article before using any of the training material. I can provide this material for free because of our generous paid subscribers at CWT. Thank you so much for your support!
Church safety teams are most effective when they train regularly. I recommend that every church safety ministry conduct at least four hours of training every month. This keeps your team sharp, builds consistency, and ensures that everyone knows how to respond when real threats arise. Training is not a one-time event. It is sustainment that equips the body of Christ to continue protecting the flock with excellence.
This month’s focus is on contacting suspicious persons and suspicious vehicles. These are two of the most common challenges church safety teams face, and they are also the best opportunities to stop an incident before it escalates into violence. Properly identifying behaviors, safely making contact, and using de-escalation skills are all essential to the ministry of church safety.
Training Resources Included
To make it simple for your team to train, I’ve prepared a complete set of resources you can download and use:
Training Plan & Sermon – A four-hour block with both classroom instruction and hands-on scenarios. Includes a short sermon to frame the training in Scripture and purpose.
Instructor Handout – Scenario administration guidelines and detailed scenarios with expected outcomes. Designed for the person running the training.
Quick-Reference Checklist – A one-page tool for instructors to use during scenarios.
Student Handout – A clear and simple guide for your team members, covering pre-attack indicators, contact and cover, de-escalation, and the scenarios they will practice.
Slide Deck – A visual presentation to support the classroom portion of the training.
These materials are designed to be practical, repeatable, and ministry-focused. They will help your team practice the skills they need to confidently and biblically engage with suspicious persons or vehicles on church property.
How These Resources Can Be Used
These training materials are being released free of charge for church safety teams. They may be used freely by qualified individuals to train church security teams, provided that the training itself is offered free of charge and not for profit.
They may not be sold, packaged, or redistributed for commercial use. This keeps the focus where it belongs: equipping the church body to serve and protect in Christ’s name, not turning training into a business product.
Why This Matters
Suspicious persons and vehicles show up at churches every week across the country. Sometimes it is someone in genuine need. Other times it is a person with ill intent. Your team’s ability to discern the difference and handle the situation calmly is what allows the church to remain open, welcoming, and safe.
The ministry of church safety is not about creating a bunker. It is about enabling the congregation to worship freely, without fear, while being watchful and prepared. This training reminds your team that they are part of the body of Christ, serving with hospitality, discernment, and vigilance.
How to Use These Resources
Download the materials, schedule your four-hour training session, and walk your team through both the classroom section and the role-playing scenarios. Rotate roles so that everyone gets practice as contact and cover. Always debrief each scenario and end with success.
If you already conduct monthly training, this will be part of your sustainment cycle. If you haven’t started yet, this is a great way to set the standard for your team going forward.
I encourage you to take these resources and put them to work this month. Training is not optional. It is what prepares us to serve, protect, and build confidence in the church.
Hi Keith: Thank you for sharing this excellent security training information. Your post is cross-posted here (https://terral.substack.com/cp/173175926) for sharing with my survival group members to help them better identify threats and create contingencies for securing survival group activities. Very good stuff. Blessings, Terral
The comfort zone of church administrators, pastors and volunteers is like a wet blanket on security. With no past to remind them of their need for safety and security both lack of incident history and their routines uninterrupted they look at anyone who is talking preparation as a lunatic. However, they also don't think that growth will bring in troubled families or strangers. Attitudes always change when it happens to you or your own. Thats unfortunate but true and Americans like to forget bad things and act like hiding their heads in the sand is called safety. My folks suffer from false sense of security and are exposed. We are in a transition period without a lead pastor and are more vulnerable to the probability of an event. Sometimes you let it break to make change happen. Dont let it break.